Apple Watch owners will have to wait longer for watchOS 2

Those of you keenly awaiting the new incarnation of watchOS for Apple's smartwatch will doubtless be disappointed to hear that version 2 has been delayed thanks to a glitch.

According to the Telegraph, an Apple spokesman commented: "We have discovered a bug in development of watchOS 2 that is taking a bit longer to fix than we expected. We will not release watchOS 2 today, but will shortly."

Hopefully the use of the word “shortly” means we should have watchOS 2 pretty soon indeed, and the delay is a minor one. It should have been released alongside iOS 9 yesterday.

As the Telegraph observed, according to a Glasgow-based indie iOS and Mac developer, James Thomson, the delay is due to a FairPlay decryption error which he stumbled upon.

Thomson tweeted: “It’s been a long day, including delaying an entire OS release.”

The new version of watchOS gives Apple smartwatch owners more options with watch faces, along with new watch faces including time-lapse videos and a photo album option. There will also be further customisation possible with complications, and new features like the nightstand mode which can turn your Apple Watch into a mini bedside alarm clock.

Perhaps the biggest change though is the introduction of native apps that run on the watch, meaning better performance and more capabilities in general.

All this is a major boon to existing owners of an Apple Watch, but it’s unlikely to make much difference to smartwatch fence sitters who haven’t yet taken the plunge.